Defense against Hypersonic Glide Vehicles

DWG said:
Not mine, I hasten to add, it's Henry Adams Bellows' translation of the Poetic Edda. Amongst other things, Bellows also wrote the post-WWI National Guard manual on riot control!
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I didn't think it was yours, it flowed like the Edda.
 
Nice find.
Josh_TN said:
That is an interesting slide. Very som of SM-3 1B.
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No surprise here. After all it was the Japanese program for their BMD for their upcoming Arsenal ships. For some reason they needed American permission cooperation. Since the model differs the question is whether this is a further evolved SM-3 Block IIA design or the same but just different looking. The makeup doesn't seem any different.
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It looks like the KE vehicle is new but that the rest of the missile is basically the same. Which is understandable; both nations use the Standard series and have launch tubes and handling equipment compatible with it, and it probably lowers development and integration costs.
 
SM-3 has a two pulse motor in its KE vehicle which I consider a de facto third stage. This image seems to depict a conical fin stabilized interceptor rather than an exoatmo one, but the building blocks look quite similar.
 
Josh_TN said:
That is an interesting slide. Very son of SM-3 1B.
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That is honestly very much what I expected to see happen. 21" SM3 stack up till the KV, and then a new, endo-atmo KV.



Josh_TN said:
SM-3 has a two pulse motor in its KE vehicle which I consider a de facto third stage. This image seems to depict a conical fin stabilized interceptor rather than an exoatmo one, but the building blocks look quite similar.
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That would be a FOURTH stage, as there's openly a third stage rocket motor on SM3 under the KV with the KV having a dual-pulse motor on it.
 

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If their Medium-class carrier is the size of the model in the room, that's honestly several times the size I was expecting for a Brilliant Pebbles style garage.

But an orbital defense versus HGVs suggests boost phase interception, at least based on the US HVG test off a Titan. Max altitude was only 130kft.
 
Scott Kenny said:
If their Medium-class carrier is the size of the model in the room, that's honestly several times the size I was expecting for a Brilliant Pebbles style garage.

But an orbital defense versus HGVs suggests boost phase interception, at least based on the US HVG test off a Titan. Max altitude was only 130kft.
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There is to be space-based endo-atmospheric interceptors as well as exo-atmospheric ones.
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Josh_TN said:
No on is going to be immune from a sufficiently large or sophisticated ICBM attack in my lifetime, IMO.
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Depends entirely on how quickly the orbital layer is built.

Can SpaceX double their current launch rate? To support Starlink and to support some 30k Brilliant Pebbles sheds.
 
Scott Kenny said:
Depends entirely on how quickly the orbital layer is built.

Can SpaceX double their current launch rate? To support Starlink and to support some 30k Brilliant Pebbles sheds.
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Easily, once starship comes online, if you mean throw weight rather than absolute cadence rate.
Can the U.S. afford all those satellites and interceptors and their development costs? Orbital mechanics is going to require a massive number of carriers and interceptors from a country that has issues building a suitable number SAMs for its foreign basing and ignores its continental defense. The other problem is that the offense will always be cheaper than the defense.
 
Josh_TN said:
Easily, once starship comes online, if you mean throw weight rather than absolute cadence rate.
Can the U.S. afford all those satellites and interceptors and their development costs? Orbital mechanics is going to require a massive number of carriers and interceptors from a country that has issues building a suitable number SAMs for its foreign basing and ignores its continental defense. The other problem is that the offense will always be cheaper than the defense.
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We don't seem to have a problem making the stupid-cheap seekers for APKWS, for example. Though admittedly, Brilliant Pebbles needs to be more like the SM3 KKV and TSRM, or THAAD.
 
Scott Kenny said:
We don't seem to have a problem making the stupid-cheap seekers for APKWS, for example. Though admittedly, Brilliant Pebbles needs to be more like the SM3 KKV and TSRM, or THAAD.
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That’s like comparing a rifle to a fighter aircraft, relatively speaking.

The lift will be there if anyone is willing to oay for it; Starship alone probably could provide it most of what was needed but we are already seeing one potential major competitor with if anything greater volume and lift prove their capabilities and we will possibly see another company or two introduce F9 analogs in the U.S. inside a couple years (and probably at least several more in China, a potential threat).

Paying for the development and quantities of satellites needed is the bottleneck, not lift. The lift will be there long before the system can materialize IMO. I personally think it ultimately unworkable in terms of cost effectiveness with current technology, but not because I do not think there is a way to orbit it all by end of decade.

Alternatively a system that engaged ground targets seems almost simplistic, as an offensive deterrent rather than an air tight defense. A lot less costs would be associated with that, though probably more mass, but if you are drowning in ground to LEO lift, more mass seems like a lower risk/cost to me.
 
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Josh_TN said:
That’s like comparing a rifle to a fighter aircraft, relatively speaking.
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Granted.

I was assuming a Garage like a Starlink v2 (full size), that held the aiming thrusters and maybe some sensors. Could just use the seekers on the interceptor, but I suspect that weapon sensors are short-lived.


Josh_TN said:
The lift will be there if anyone is willing to oay for it; Starship alone probably could provide it most of what was needed but we are already seeing one potential major competitor with if anything greater volume and lift prove their capabilities and we will possibly see another company or two introduce F9 analogs in the U.S. inside a couple years (and probably at least several more in China, a potential threat).

Paying for the development and quantities of satellites needed is the bottleneck, not lift. The lift will be there long before the system can materialize IMO. I personally think it ultimately unworkable in terms of cost effectiveness with current technology, but not because I do not think there is a way to orbit it all by end of decade.
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Disagree, the limiting factor in the 1980s was lift. The designs for Garage and Interceptor were relatively affordable, IIRC they'd be about 5mil each now and I suspect the overall bill now would be even cheaper. Witness the costs of Javelin missile CLU and missile.



Josh_TN said:
Alternatively a system that engaged ground targets seems almost simplistic, as an offensive deterrent rather than an air tight defense. A lot less costs would be associated with that, though probably more mass, but if you are drowning in ground to LEO lift, more mass seems like a lower risk/cost to me.
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Pournell's "Rods From God"? You'd need a pretty expensive Astro-IMU in the bus. Plus seekers that can operate at Orbital speeds in air.
 
Josh_TN said:
No on is going to be immune from a sufficiently large or sophisticated ICBM attack in my lifetime, IMO.
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Regardless, it changes the dynamics of negotiations and how far an adversary is prepared to push a clearly unacceptable position off the back of a nuclear capability that might be moot. It also discourages smaller nuclear adversaries and hence nuclear proliferation.
 
Forest Green said:
Regardless, it changes the dynamics of negotiations and how far an adversary is prepared to push a clearly unacceptable position off the back of a nuclear capability that might be moot. It also discourages smaller nuclear adversaries and hence nuclear proliferation.
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Sure, even fairly marginal systems have had rather dramatic effects on nuclear strategy. But I think people who post about ICBM immunity are living in a fantasy world.

I think the U.S. needs to develop the technology, and potentially the infrastructure, to at least be able to deploy orbital ABM platforms and orbit to surface conventional RVs, if only because the PRC most definitely will. But I also think such systems are inherently destabilizing and that meaningful defense coverage or offensive depth will be exorbitantly expensive.

I am not a fan of the idea but it probably needs at least the development work done, if only to create a fallback position of rapid deployment. The issue eventually becomes any country with a sufficiently capable orbital interception system is capable of simply preventing all ground to orbit activities of its strategic opponents.
 
Josh_TN said:
Sure, even fairly marginal systems have had rather dramatic effects on nuclear strategy. But I think people who post about ICBM immunity are living in a fantasy world.
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For sure, but if the other side is risking getting hit by 2,000 for the sake of getting a handful, or even a few dozen through, they are more likely to fold.
 
The fatal flaw is that the adversary can shoot down the orbital segment before it is deployed.
It will result in a political crisis and some retaliation, but ultimately nobody will start a preemptive nuclear war because their shiny toy was destroyed before it could be operational, or even a preemptive large scale war, since there would be no political capital to be spent over some satellites being destroyed, with no casualties.
The idea that shooting down satellites is a line that shouldn't be crossed mainly exists because there is no precedent, once it happens, life will go on, as it always does.
 
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TheKutKu said:
The fatal flaw is that the adversary can shoot down the orbital segment before it is deployed.
It will result in a political crisis and some retaliation, but ultimately nobody will start a preemptive nuclear war because their shiny toy was destroyed before it could be operational, or even a preemptive large scale war, since there would be no political capital to be spent over some satellites being destroyed, with no casualties.
The idea that shooting down satellites is a line that shouldn't be crossed mainly exists because there is no precedent, once it happens, life will go on, as it always does.
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? We're talking about constellations of satellites numbering in the 10s of thousands.

Starlink currently has just short of 9000 satellites in orbit right now, and is planning on adding more than 20,000 more.
 
Scott Kenny said:
? We're talking about constellations of satellites numbering in the 10s of thousands.

Starlink currently has just short of 9000 satellites in orbit right now, and is planning on adding more than 20,000 more.
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LEO satellites can be destroyed from ground (or alternatively space based weapons). Laser, high power radio or microwave, with the correctly sized ground based infrastructure it is trivial to disable the thousands of satellites that will overfly the adversary country many times a day. Satellites are not particularly hard target to destroy with directed energetic weapons, easier than ICBM or HGV, you know where they are, they're only a few hundred km away from you, and there's nothing but atmosphere (or not even much atmosphere if the source is space or high altitude based) between you and them.

The adversary will fry a few hundred satellites to send a message, there will be a retaliation of some other satellite shot down, then everybody backs down because nobody wants to risk WW3, and also to limit orbital pollution


The alternative to backing down would be putting the satellites in higher orbit, which would increase the cost and start a weapon race, at some point why not put the directed energy weapons on the moon lmao. But ultimately the speed of light is a limitation and you can't put your anti-missile laser satellite too far away into interplanetary space.
 
An attack on a military satellite is an act of war, just like an attack on a military plane or ship.

If we were also deploying RFGs, I'd drop an RFG on any facility that fired on a military satellite. Or at least drop said RFG on the emitters they used.
 
Scott Kenny said:
An attack on a military satellite is an act of war, just like an attack on a military plane or ship.

If we were also deploying RFGs, I'd drop an RFG on any facility that fired on a military satellite. Or at least drop said RFG on the emitters they used.
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But it is not an act that will result in immediate nuclear retaliation or large scale war.
There is no such thing as a binary act of war, I think history has proven this quite conclusively.

Utimately nobody will be hurt by this attack, and the attack will not violate the country's territorial integrity, the population would not consider it differently than a drone being shot down in a far away country. No matter how much a space force may be angry over this, no politicians would risk a large scale war over this.
 
TheKutKu said:
But it is not an act that will result in immediate nuclear retaliation or large scale war.
There is no such thing as a binary act of war, I think history has proven this quite conclusively.

Utimately nobody will be hurt by this attack, and the attack will not violate the country's territorial integrity, the population would not consider it differently than a drone being shot down in a far away country. No matter how much a space force may be angry over this, no politicians would risk a large scale war over this.
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Right. Especially when the immediate, automatic response to an attack on the satellite is the attacker getting an RFG.

"You attacked a military defense satellite, the satellite defended itself."
 
Scott Kenny said:
Right. Especially when the immediate, automatic response to an attack on the satellite is the attacker getting an RFG.

"You attacked a military defense satellite, the satellite defended itself."
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RFG are stupid idea, and much harder to deploy than a more simple space based interceptor/anti missile system.
And I did say there would be a retaliation, initially more likely "limited", that is limited to space warfare tit-for-tat rather than directly going to the terrestrial side, because then the escalation would be on the defending country for going from an unmanned object being destroyed in international space to a manned facility being targeted on sovereign land.
But it is unlikely to result in an all out war, just a political crisis. And in the end the large scale orbital Anti missile system will be shelved.
 
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TheKutKu said:
RFG are stupid idea, and much harder to deploy than a more simple space based interceptor/anti missile system.
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RFGs are conveniently hard to stop and cause relatively limited damage.

Ideally you'd have one RFG inside each Brilliant Pebbles garage, but you'd really need to shoot back from a separate satellite to hit, due to orbital mechanics.



TheKutKu said:
And I did say there would be a retaliation, initially more likely "limited", that is limited to space warfare tit-for-tat rather than directly going to the terrestrial side, but it is unlikely to result in an all out war, just a political crisis.
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I don't think an attack from the surface would result in the destruction of an OPFOR satellite. Laws of War are pretty clear, it's fair game to shoot back at the attacker. Sinking a ship/plane that was not involved in the attack is a serious escalation.



TheKutKu said:
And in the end the large scale orbital Anti missile system will be shelved.
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Disagree.
 
Josh_TN said:
But that in and of itself is destabilizing, assuming no peer equivalent system.
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'Stability' has failed to achieve its purpose.

TheKutKu said:
The alternative to backing down would be putting the satellites in higher orbit, which would increase the cost and start a weapon race, at some point why not put the directed energy weapons on the moon lmao. But ultimately the speed of light is a limitation and you can't put your anti-missile laser satellite too far away into interplanetary space.
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Not going to win a space weapons race against Falcon 9 and New Glenn and a space nuke would be removed immediately as a matter of urgency.
 
Light travels from moon to earth in a matter of a single second. Far fetched but why wouldn't that be not relevant to have a laser gunning down high value objects from there?
 

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